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Saturday, 2 September 2017

Tommy Robinson Muslim Fostering Lies

After the Case Management Order in what has become known as the Muslim fostering case was made public, this caused many in our free and fearless press to at least quieten down for a moment, Trevor Phillips excepted. The idea that Tower Hamlets council had deliberately taken a white Christian five-year-old girl and placed her with a Muslim family who did not speak English turned out not to be true.

Stephen Yaxley Lennon aka Tommy Robinson

But that has not stopped Stephen Yaxley Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson, from picking up on the case and lying through his teeth about it, despite his being keen to call “liar” on others. Still with Rebel Media, but without the assistance of Caolan Robertson, Lennon has put together a video with the ridiculous title of “Jihad By Foster Care”.

He starts with a flat-out whopper: “One of the families couldn’t even speak a word of English”. It is a requirement of being foster carers in the UK that the family speaks English. So Lennon’s research is down to the usual standard, then. He then parrots the account given by the Times last Monday, adding talk of “indoctrination”.

Still, local authorities, he tells, have to consider religious and linguistic backgrounds when placing children into foster care. What he clearly hasn’t taken on board - or if he has, he’s ignored it, which is worse - is that Tower Hamlets were faced with an emergency, where the Police had intervened, and a biological mother who had alcohol and cocaine issues.

Then it’s on to the next whopper: “An investigation into the issue was being led by Neil Carmichael, the former Conservative chairman of the education select committee”. No it wasn’t: Carmichael, who lost his seat in June, was investigating fostering in general.

This does not deter Lennon, who goes on to claim “The investigation found that this girl was placed in two homes … both mothers from them [sic] families covered their faces fully”. Well, whatever an investigation found, it wasn’t the one led by Carmichael, as Lennon suggests. So that’s two whoppers in one.

Still, when you’re on a roll, and all that, so Lennon then re-states his flat-out lie about the foster carers not being able to speak English. And, inevitably, we get the “Reverse the roles for one second … we’ve got a five-year-old Muslim girl, she’s placed with a Christian family, and they’re making her eat bacon”. Er, hello, this is speculative crap.

The girl’s guardian spoke to her, and as the CMO makes clear, “The Guardian has no concerns as to the child’s welfare and she reports that the child is settled and well cared for by the foster carer”. The bacon in the carbonara story has not been backed up, and appears to come from the girl’s mother, or a source close to her.

And then Lennon accuses Tower Hamlets of not giving any consideration to the girl’s background or cultural identity. Did he not realise that the council was working to place the child with her maternal grandmother, but couldn’t until that person had been checked out?

Whatever, he’s decided that cultural sensitivity was not important to Tower Hamlets. Anyone might think that this is part of some agenda-driven construct to bash more of those Scary Muslims (tm). It’s certainly part of council bashing, as Lennon goes on to point at Rotherham Council over the so-called UKIP fostering row.

Eastern European children had been taken away from foster carers who were UKIP members. Nigel “Thirsty” Farage (another practised liar) waded in and condemned the council without bothering to get the facts, and Lennon is following in his footsteps.

The problem here is that it wasn’t just UKIP - the children were from a Roma background, there were potential security issues, and in any case, the reason for the children being taken into care, a problem with their father, had been resolved. Still, pesky facts, eh?

So that’s another Lennon lie. Still, back to the rant: “When it comes to white English kids, cultural sensitivity means nothing”. What happens when he re-examines the Tower Hamlets case, and finds that the mother’s parents were from a Muslim heritage, God Only Knows. In any case, he chucks in another questionable claim: “Sharia households”.

But then, guess what? A real wacko conspiracy theory provides the icing on the cake. A Muslim preacher had hosted a workshop encouraging more Muslims to become foster parents. This was A Drive For Foster Jihad. “Radical Islamic preachers are helping Muslims foster our children” … “I don’t think he’s encouraging foster parents out of the goodness of his black, shrivelled-up heart”. And there’s more.

Tower Hamlets, he asserts, has a shortage of non-Muslim foster carers. Extremists are encouraging Muslims to become foster parents. “This is a recruitment drive … our local authorities are complicit in the conversion and the abuse of our children”. And again we get “homes that don’t speak English”. But it’s “Child abuse … period”.

Stephen Yaxley Lennon, his real name and the one he gave to Police the other evening when they pulled him over, is on video condemning himself as not only a liar, but someone who peddles frankly batshit conspiracy theories which can have only one consequence - incitement of hatred against local authorities, and especially Muslims.

Lennon ought to read the CMO from the Tower Hamlets case. He will see from that that this is not a straightforward case. The Police and council acted to safeguard the welfare of the child, as is their duty. There is no recruitment drive for “Foster Jihad”.